We seemed to be where we should in the mid field and I was pleased with the way the car went straight out of the box, so that’s always good when you don’t have the feeling you are going to need to create a whole new race car to be on the pace.

In the dry in the afternoon, after my first couple of runs on the prototype and the Prime, I felt we could get more out of the car, so we made a fairly big change which I think worked in our favour. I was quite pleased with my Option run but we still have some work to do, as there is more to come. Overall, a good Friday, a good start to the weekend.”

Jean-Eric Vergne (First Practice Session: 19laps, 1:23.386, P13 / Second Practice Session: 38 laps, 1:16.351, P15) “The morning session was useful in terms of learning how the extremes and intermediates behave, as we might have more wet weather in the next two days. The car responded well in the wet.

In the afternoon, we did the usual Friday job of evaluating tyres and so on. I was not so happy with the way my car was behaving, so we need to look at the data now and fix it.

We seem to be roughly where we should be, so as long as we can make progress tomorrow, we can have a good weekend.”

Laurent Mekies (Head of Vehicle Performance): “We actually ended up with more dry running than we had expected today and that was a bit of a bonus. In the rain in the morning, we were able to get a good impression of running in these conditions, which is important given that the forecast is for more rain over the weekend.

In the afternoon, we ran our usual tyre comparison, while evaluating different set-ups across both cars. I think overall, we are reasonably happy with our day, having got through our programme, with both cars running trouble-free.

As usual, there is a big pack of cars in the midfield, but we have started the weekend on a good footing and, if we put everything together tonight, we can move forward tomorrow and be fully in the fight with our competitors.”